A beginners guide to metasploit

Metasploit is an all round tool that comes with Kali Linux.It is used to perform penetration testing and various other attacks. Metasploit has various exploits and payloads.There is a complete documentation on metasploit on internet.You can read that documentation to know more about metasploit.
Types of Exploit
1) Active
Active exploits will exploit a specific host,run until completion,and then exit.

2)Passive Exploit
Passive exploits almost always focus on clients such as web browser,FTP client etc.It wait for incoming host and exploit them as they connect.

Types of Payloads
Payloads consist of code that runs remotely.There are three types of payloads in metasploit.
1)Singles
Singles are payloads that a self-contained and completely standalone.A single payload can be something as simple as adding a user to the target system or running calc.exe

2)Stagers
Stagers setup a network connection between attacker and victim and are designed to be small and reliable.

3)Stages
Stages are payload components that are downloaded by stagers modules.The various payload stages provide advanced features with no size limits such as meterpreter,VNC injection and the Iphone 'ipcon' shell.

In this article I am going to show how to hack windows XP service pack 2 using metasploit. I have XP installed on my virtual machine.
Consider some points below:-
>This attack will only work in Windows XP and lower versions.
>Its a network based attack.It means that both attacker and victim must be on same network.